Etsy vs Framekit: Which Is Better in 2026?

A designer lists a $25 Canva template bundle on Etsy and sells it to a buyer in Texas. After the $0.20 listing renewal, Etsy's 6.5% transaction fee and 3% plus $0.25 for payment processing, she keeps $22.17.

If Etsy's Offsite Ads found that buyer, another 12% to 15% comes off and she keeps between $19.17 and $18.42.

The same bundle sold through a Framekit store on the free plan keeps $22.72 after Framekit's 5% and Stripe's processing, and $23.97 on the Business plan.

Only one of the two lets her build a shop that keeps working without a marketplace around it.

Etsy vs Framekit is a choice between being found and being owned. Etsy's marketplace puts a new listing in front of millions of shoppers searching every day, and it collects and remits VAT and US sales tax on digital downloads for you.

Framekit gives you a store inside your own website, with no listing fees and no ad fees, and leaves the traffic and the tax to you.

An online marketplace is a platform where many sellers list products and the platform brings the buyers, sets the rules and takes a cut of each sale, while a direct store is a shop on your own site where you bring the buyers and keep the relationship.

Full disclosure: Framekit is our product, Etsy wins on discovery and tax below, and in October 2026 we re-verified Etsy's fees through its fee policy and help centre, which block automated reading, so a few Etsy figures carried over from our July check are marked as such.

How We Put This Etsy vs Framekit Comparison Together

This page compares Etsy and Framekit from each company's published rules rather than from test sales, with Etsy's figures taken from its fees and payments policy and help articles and Framekit's from its pricing page and shipped checkout code.

Read at the source. Etsy's Fees and Payments Policy, its help articles on VAT on digital items, refunds, digital listings and deposits, and its Etsy Payments policy.

Etsy's site blocks automated reads, so we confirmed the October 2026 figures through Etsy's own pages as indexed by search, and kept two July figures (the $10,000 Offsite Ads threshold rule and the $100 per-order cap) that we could not re-read directly.

Read in the product. Framekit charges the buyer through the seller's own Stripe account and takes its fee as an application fee on the price after any discount, which is where the Framekit fee and refund rows come from.

Calculated. A $25 digital template bundle sold to US buyers at $500, $2,000 and $5,000 a month, which is 20, 80 and 200 sales a month, with and without 20% of orders attributed to Offsite Ads.

Not tested. We did not open an Etsy shop or run Framekit purchases for this page, and we make no claims about search ranking on either.

Etsy vs Framekit at a Glance

This table compares Etsy and Framekit on the fourteen points that decide where a digital seller should list, using each platform's own October 2026 terms.

In one lineEtsy rents you a crowd and handles the tax for a stack of small fees that never fall, while Framekit gives you a store with no crowd and a fee that falls to zero.

What Etsy and Framekit Cost Over Twelve Months

At $2,000 a month in digital sales, Etsy costs $2,712 a year in listing, transaction and processing fees before any ads, and Framekit costs $1,356 on its Business plan including Stripe, so moving the same sales off Etsy saves about $1,350 a year before Offsite Ads are counted.

The table below is the full annual cost of selling the $25 bundle, with Framekit's paid plans at yearly billing.

The second Etsy column assumes one order in five is attributed to Offsite Ads: at 15% for the $500 shop (under $10,000 a year, so it could also opt out) and 12% for the two larger shops, where participation is mandatory.

Per sale, on the $25 bundle

Where Etsy is close. On a single clean sale, Etsy at $22.17 and Framekit's free plan at $22.72 are only 55 cents apart. If you sell a handful of items a month and Etsy brings most of the buyers, the fee difference is not a reason to leave.

Where it stops being close. Offsite Ads turn an 11% platform into a 23% to 26% platform on the orders they touch, and once a shop has sold $10,000 in the past year it cannot opt out.

Framekit has no equivalent charge, and its Business plan removes the percentage entirely.

The 5% free plan equals the $39 Business plan at $780 a month in sales, and Pro's 3% equals Business at about $667 a month, or about $533 on yearly billing.

Run it yourselfopen Etsy's monthly statement, add listing, transaction, processing and Offsite Ads fees, and divide by your gross sales. That is your real Etsy rate.

Then compare it with 2.9% plus 30 cents per order, plus $31 a month, which is Framekit Business with Stripe.

If your Etsy rate is above 10% and most buyers already know your name, the gap is money you are paying for traffic you did not need.

Refunds, Disputes and Getting Paid

Etsy returns its transaction and processing fees in proportion when you refund through Shop Manager and keeps only the listing fee, while Framekit keeps its percentage on a refund and Stripe keeps its processing fee, so a refunded $25 sale costs an Etsy seller $0.20 and a Framekit free-plan seller $2.28.

The refund row favours Etsy. It is one of the few places Etsy is kinder than Framekit. On Framekit's free plan, a refunded $25 sale costs $2.28; on Business it costs the $1.03 Stripe keeps.

The payout row favours Framekit for new sellers. A new Etsy shop waits about two weeks for each sale to become eligible and can have part of its balance held in reserve.

A Framekit sale is in your own Stripe balance at checkout, and once Stripe's first payout clears, it can pay out daily.

Our guide to the best ways to get paid selling digital products compares payout timing across more platforms.

VAT, Sales Tax and Who Files Them

Etsy collects and remits VAT on digital downloads sold to buyers in the countries it covers, including the EU and UK, and collects US sales tax as a marketplace facilitator in states with those laws, while Framekit collects no tax at all and leaves registration and filing with you.

What Etsy does. When a buyer in a covered country buys a download, Etsy adds the VAT at checkout and remits it, deducting it from the order before the funds reach your payment account.

In the US, Etsy calculates, collects and remits state sales tax on qualifying orders under marketplace facilitator laws, and sellers cannot opt out.

Its help article on how VAT works on digital items sets out the details.

What Framekit does. Nothing on tax. Framekit charges buyers through your own Stripe account, so you are the seller, and its checkout does not calculate or add VAT or sales tax. If you owe tax, it has to come out of your price.

When the gap costs money. A seller outside the EU owes VAT on digital sales to EU consumers from the first sale, usually through the EU's One Stop Shop, and a non-UK seller owes UK VAT on digital sales to UK consumers from the first sale too.

EU-based sellers get a €10,000 a year threshold for cross-border digital sales. Most US states only require registration after you pass an economic nexus threshold, commonly $100,000 of sales into that state a year.

A designer selling mostly to her own country, under those thresholds, loses little by leaving Etsy's tax handling; one selling planners to buyers across Europe loses a real service.

A worked example. A $25 bundle sold to a consumer in Germany on Etsy has German VAT at 19% added on top at checkout, so the buyer pays $29.75 and Etsy remits the $4.75 for you.

Sell the same bundle for $25 through your own Framekit store as a seller registered for EU VAT, and the $25 has to include the VAT: $21.01 is yours and $3.99 goes to the tax office in your next One Stop Shop return.

Either raise EU prices or accept the smaller margin, and remember the filing itself takes time every quarter. Our VAT guide for creators explains the thresholds in more depth.

Files, Delivery and What the Buyer Sees

Etsy caps instant downloads at five files of 20MB each, which is tight for LUT packs, preset bundles with sample images or high-resolution printables, while Framekit publishes no per-file ceiling or bandwidth allowance and delivers the download on the confirmation page the moment payment clears.

The 20MB limit is the row that moves sellers.

A pack of six LUTs with sample stills and an install guide can pass 20MB easily, and Etsy sellers often split products into parts or zip a link to outside hosting, which adds friction for the buyer.

The 7-day link is the Framekit row to plan for: a buyer who loses the files months later will email you, and you resend a fresh link from the order.

Where Etsy Wins

Etsy is the stronger choice for sellers who do not yet have an audience, sellers of physical goods as well as downloads, and sellers who want VAT and US sales tax handled, because no direct store can replicate a marketplace's daily search traffic or its tax role.

Discovery. Etsy's marketplace puts a listing in front of millions of buyers who are already searching for planners, templates and printables.

A new store on your own site starts with no traffic at all, and building it takes months of posting, search work or email. For a seller with no following, that is Etsy's whole value and it is worth the fees.

Tax handled. VAT on digital downloads for covered countries and US marketplace-facilitator sales tax, collected and remitted without your involvement.

Refunds that cost almost nothing. Transaction and processing fees come back in proportion when you refund through Shop Manager.

Physical and digital in one shop. Framekit sells digital downloads only, with no shipping and no print-on-demand. An illustrator selling prints and printables together needs Etsy, or another store, for the physical side.

Trust at checkout. Buyers who have bought on Etsy before already have an account and saved payment details, which removes friction a new store has to earn.

Verdict: if you are starting from zero, list on Etsy first and let its traffic prove your product sells. If you are past that stage and feeling the fees, the best Etsy alternatives for digital products and Gumroad vs Etsy show where the money goes when you move.

Where Framekit Wins

Framekit wins for digital sellers who can bring their own buyers, because it charges no listing fees and no ad fees, takes nothing at all on the $39 Business plan, publishes no 20MB file cap, and puts the shop on a website that carries the seller's name rather than the marketplace's.

Framekit is an AI website builder with a digital-download store, client galleries, Frame.io-style video review and Slides decks in one account, with storage pooled across them: 10GB on Free, 50GB on Starter, 300GB on Pro and 2TB on Business.

The texture. You upload a file, set a price and add a cover, and the product appears twice: as a section on your Framekit site, and as a direct buy link at framekit.ai/buy that you can paste into Pinterest, a YouTube description or a newsletter.

Products are unlimited on every plan, free products work as lead magnets, and the buyer downloads straight from the confirmation page.

The number that mattersat $5,000 a month in sales, Framekit Business costs $2,832 a year including Stripe; Etsy costs $6,780 before ads and about $8,220 once one order in five comes through Offsite Ads.

The standout detailFramekit's fee is charged on the price after a discount code, so a 30%-off launch pays its fee on the discounted price, and there is no listing fee to renew every four months or every sale.

The gotchathere is no marketplace. Every buyer comes from your own site, links, search pages and audience, and a brand-new store with no following can sit at zero sales for weeks. You are also the seller for tax, and the checkout always opens at framekit.ai/buy, not on your own domain.

Skip it ifyou have no audience yet and no plan to build one, you sell physical products, or you want VAT handled.

Verdict: for a photographer, designer or planner maker with a following of their own, Framekit is the cheaper home and the only one of the two that builds an asset you own. The setup guides for selling Canva templates and selling Lightroom presets from your website walk through it.

Why the Shop Should Live on Your Own Site

The case for a direct store is not only fees: a shop on your own site turns every product page into a search result for your name, lets you put products beside the work that sells them, and keeps working the day a marketplace changes its rules.

On Etsy, your listing competes with every other listing on the same search page, sometimes with your own products.

On your own site, a product page sits next to your portfolio, your tutorials or your client work, and nobody else's product is one click away.

Each product page is indexed under your domain from the Starter plan, so the search traffic it earns accrues to you. A blog post about how you designed a planner can end in the planner's buy button.

There is also a dependency question. Etsy has changed its fees and ad rules several times; the Offsite Ads charge itself arrived after many shops were established. A store on your own site cannot be re-priced by a marketplace, though Framekit's own plan prices apply.

Running Etsy and Framekit Side by Side

Running both is the most common sensible answer, because Etsy keeps finding new buyers while a Framekit store collects the buyers you bring yourself at a lower cost, and the two do not conflict as long as prices and product details stay consistent.

A workable split. Keep your best-selling listings on Etsy, where search traffic finds them.

Put the full catalogue, bundles and launches on your Framekit store, and send your own audience there: Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, newsletter. Every sale through your own link avoids Etsy's fees and Offsite Ads on that order.

Pricing. Some sellers price slightly lower on their own store, since it costs them less; others keep prices identical to avoid confusing buyers. Either works; check Etsy's current house rules before linking buyers away from Etsy messages.

What a split shop costs. Take the $2,000 a month seller from the cost table and move 60% of sales, the buyers who already follow her, to a Framekit Business store, leaving 40% on Etsy.

The Etsy side ($800 a month, 32 orders) costs about $1,085 a year before ads; the Framekit side ($1,200 a month, 48 orders) costs about $962 including the $372 plan and Stripe.

That is $2,047 a year against $2,712 for selling everything on Etsy, a saving of about $665, while keeping the Etsy search traffic that brings new buyers in.

A free product. Framekit supports free downloads on every plan, so a free sample or mini planner on your own site builds your list without spending Etsy listing fees.

Moving Downloads From Etsy to Framekit: A Checklist

Moving from Etsy to Framekit is a re-upload rather than a migration, since there is no importer, and the decision to make first is how you will handle VAT and sales tax, because Etsy stops doing it for any sale that goes through your own store.

Reviews are the one asset that does not move. Your Etsy reviews stay on Etsy, so keep at least the listings that carry the most social proof live while your own store builds its own.

How to Decide Between Etsy and Framekit

Take these questions in order, because the first two decide whether you can leave Etsy at all, and only after them does the fee comparison earn a vote.

1. Do you sell physical products as well as downloads? If yes, keep Etsy (or another store) for the physical side; Framekit sells digital downloads only. If not, go to question 2.

2. Where do most of your buyers come from today? If most of them come from Etsy search, stay on Etsy and add a Framekit store for the buyers you bring yourself. If most already find you through your own channels, go to question 3.

3. Do you sell meaningfully into the EU or UK and want tax handled? If yes, Etsy's VAT handling is worth a lot; keep those products on Etsy or use a merchant of record. If not, go to question 4.

4. Are your files bigger than 20MB, or split to fit? If yes, Framekit, which publishes no per-file ceiling. If not, go to question 5.

5. How much do you sell a month? Under $780, Framekit Free costs $546 a year on the carried example against $678 on Etsy without ads. Over $780, Framekit Business is the cheapest option on this page.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Framekit cheaper than Etsy for digital downloads?

Yes, Framekit is cheaper than Etsy at every volume we priced. On a $25 download, Etsy costs $678 a year at $500 a month in sales, $2,712 at $2,000 and $6,780 at $5,000 before Offsite Ads.

Framekit's cheapest plan costs $546, $1,356 and $2,832 including Stripe. Etsy's price buys marketplace traffic and tax handling, which Framekit does not provide.

How much does Etsy take from a $25 digital download in 2026?

Etsy takes about $2.83 from a $25 digital download sold to a US buyer, leaving $22.17: a $0.20 listing fee, a 6.5% transaction fee ($1.63) and 3% plus $0.25 for payment processing ($1.00).

If the order came through Offsite Ads, Etsy takes another 12% or 15%, leaving $19.17 or $18.42.

Can I opt out of Etsy Offsite Ads?

You can opt out of Etsy Offsite Ads only while your shop has made less than $10,000 in the past 365 days, in which case the fee on attributed orders is 15%.

Once a shop passes $10,000, Offsite Ads become mandatory at 12% of attributed orders, capped at $100 per order. Framekit has no advertising fee of any kind.

Does Etsy or Framekit keep its fees when I refund a buyer?

Etsy credits back its transaction and processing fees in proportion when you refund through Shop Manager, keeping only the $0.20 listing fee.

Framekit keeps its percentage when you refund ($1.25 on a $25 sale on Free, nothing on Business), and Stripe keeps its original processing fee of about $1.03.

Who handles VAT and sales tax on Etsy and on Framekit?

Etsy collects and remits VAT on digital downloads for buyers in covered countries, including the EU and UK, and collects US sales tax as a marketplace facilitator.

Framekit handles no tax: payments go through your own Stripe account, you are the seller, and registering and filing VAT or sales tax where you owe it is your job.

How fast do Etsy and Framekit sellers get paid?

New Etsy sellers wait about 14 days for each sale to become eligible and are paid weekly on Mondays by default, and Etsy may hold a reserve.

On Framekit the payment goes into your own Stripe account at checkout; Stripe typically makes the first payout 7 to 14 days after your first live payment and can pay daily after that.

What is the file size limit for digital downloads on Etsy and Framekit?

Etsy allows up to five files per digital listing, each up to 20MB.

Framekit publishes no per-file ceiling or bandwidth allowance for store products, which matters for LUT packs, preset bundles with sample images and high-resolution printables that Etsy sellers often have to split.

Does Framekit bring buyers like Etsy does?

No. Framekit has no marketplace, so every buyer comes from your own site, social channels, search traffic and email list. That is why it has no listing or ad fees, and it is also why a seller with no audience usually makes their first sales faster on Etsy.

Should I leave Etsy or run both?

Most digital sellers should run both for a while: keep the Etsy listings that earn search sales, and send your own audience to a Framekit store where each sale costs less.

As the share of buyers who come to you directly grows, shift launches and bundles to your own store and keep Etsy for discovery.

What happens to my Etsy reviews if I move to Framekit?

Your Etsy reviews stay on Etsy and do not transfer to Framekit or any other platform. Keep your most-reviewed listings live on Etsy while your own store builds credibility, and use buyer feedback, with permission, on your own product pages.

Is the Framekit checkout on my own domain?

No. Your Framekit site and product pages can run on your own domain from the Starter plan, but the payment step always opens on a hosted page at framekit.ai/buy with your name and logo and a "Powered by Framekit" line, on every plan.

Can I sell printables and planners on Framekit?

Yes, Framekit sells any digital download, including printables, digital planners, templates, presets and ebooks, with unlimited products on every plan.

It does not sell physical products, prints or print-on-demand, so a seller who ships paper goods still needs Etsy or another store for those.

Which is cheapest at $5,000 a month in digital sales?

Framekit Business is the cheapest at $5,000 a month: $2,832 a year including Stripe on a $25 product, against $6,780 on Etsy before ads and about $8,220 when one order in five comes through Offsite Ads at 12%.

Etsy's cost buys discovery and tax handling, so compare it with what those are worth to you.

Etsy vs Gumroad vs Framekit: where should a planner seller start?

A planner seller with no audience should start on Etsy, because its marketplace search brings buyers; Gumroad's Discover marketplace charges 30% and is smaller for planners.

A seller with a following should pick Framekit, which is the cheapest of the three above $780 a month and includes a site. Our Gumroad vs Framekit comparison covers the third pairing.

Final Verdict

Choose Etsy if you are starting with no audience, sell physical goods alongside downloads, or want VAT and US sales tax handled, because its marketplace traffic and tax role are things a direct store cannot copy.

Choose Framekit if you can bring your own buyers, because it has no listing or Offsite Ads fees, falls to 0% on the $39 Business plan, publishes no 20MB file cap, and puts your products on a site that carries your name.

At $5,000 a month that difference is roughly $4,000 a year before ads.

Where Framekit loses is everything the marketplace provides: it does not bring buyers, does not handle tax, does not sell physical products, and does not put the checkout on your own domain.

The trade-off is discovery against ownership and margin, and for many sellers the right answer is Etsy for the first sales and Framekit for every sale after the buyer knows your name.

For more on where to sell, see the best platforms to sell digital planners, the best free product-selling tools, and how much it costs to sell digital products online.